Telstra targets small business with unified comms & SaaS bundles

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 05 October 2010 08:07

IT Industry - Strategy

Telstra Business is making a renewed push into the small business market by offering, under the brand name Telstra Digital Business, tailored, 'complete solutions' of basic communications services, unified communications and collaboration tools and cloud based business applications.

To demonstrate the concept to its sales executives and channel partners Telstra has invested a considerable sum to create a demonstration cycle store in its 'Telstra Experience Centre' in the Sydney CBD and says a similar demonstration, of a different type of business, may be set up in Melbourne.

None of the services on offer are new, but what is new is that Telstra will configure a bundle of these services to meet the needs of the business and charge for them as an integrated package.

The demonstration bicycle shop, dubbed 'Pedal Power' has a staff of three: the owner who is generally in the shop; his wife who works on the business from home and a bicycle mechanic who is generally in the shop but at times out on the road.

Through Telstra's IP centrex offering the shop can set up a mini IVR system as its virtual receptionist, "press one for sales, press two for service'¦" It can have incoming calls ring any of the designated fixed or mobile numbers, including that of the home-based owner's wife, either sequentially or simultaneously.

A unified inbox for fixed and mobile voice messages and email is provided along with email, shared calendar and address book, hosted in the cloud. Telstra will, in the future, also give customers the ability to build a web site for a set fee, which it wil host.

The package will also include multimedia deskphones and security web cams that can be monitored from the phones or via the Internet from anywhere. Down the track users with mobile phones will be able to make videocalls to these phones. So, for example the mechanic out servicing a customer's bike could show the person in the store the nature of a problem.

The basic communications wil be over Telstra ADSL services but the supplied modem routers will also be able to fail over to the Next G network.

Applications such as the Xero accounting package, which is offered under Telstra's T- Suite SaaS service, will also be available as part of the bundle, but these will not be branded as T-Suite.